THE KENT VILLAGE THAT MOVED TO DEVON

 With lot of thanks to Barbara for her lovely article!

Otterden: the Kent village that moved to Devon

We know from our posts in 2021 that the village of Otterden, the next-door

parish to Stalisfield and in particular its vicar, William Paxton, became a place of

sanctuary for Jerome Nicholas Vlieland’s children after the death of their mother

Frances in August 1865. She left seven children, aged between 11 and 3, and we

know that the Millens of Syndale and the Shoves of Queen Court in Ospringe also

helped Jerome until he married Ann Johnson a year later.

All three families were important in the later Vlieland story: Charles James

Vlieland married Alice Edith Millen and her younger sister Bertha married

Herbert Samuel Shove.

But it was Otterden that seems to have had the biggest emotional impact: Charles

James and Alice Edith named their first married home in Exeter after the village,

as a cherished memorial, and the house name remained for many years even

after the family moved to 20 Southernhay, where Charles James set up his own

doctor’s practice.

What we know of Stalisfield could also be said of the village of scattered ‘meanly

built’ cottages originally known as Otterden-street. Another Domesday

settlement, it shared the barren, windswept location and red, flint-scarred soil,

and the beech, hazel and birch coppice wood. Being higher up the hill and a little

drier, the corn crop was supported better than at Stalisfield, so that its tithe

income was more productive, but daily life was still a struggle.

The crucial difference was that Otterden had a very big ‘big house’, Otterden

Place, home as we know to the Aucher, Lewin and Curteis’ families, with a

succession of wealthy owners who handsomely endowed St Lawrence Church on

the estate. In 1758, the living’s value was £62.17s.10d., with tithes of £13s.6d.

and further small income from the decayed villages of Bordfield and Monketon.

William Paxton did not marry until he was 53 and was childless, and his will in

1892 estimated his income at nearly £9,000 (£600,000 today), a painful

reflection on Jerome’s £796 a year from 1858 to 1870.

Some of the information in this post is taken from Edward Hasted, The History

and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 1798. Cornhill Farm and

Longbeech Wood near St Mary’s Church in Stalisfield clearly took their name

from the topography the first farmers found, just as Syndale Bottom, where the

Millens farmed, is evocative of life in the valley at the foot of the hill.